Intimate Exposure (12 page)

How could she possibly walk across that luxurious, softly lit dining room without groaning aloud at each step?

Creeping gingerly on bare feet, she just might manage it. But in her elegant high heels that set her hips swaying as she walked?

There was no way. She’d have an orgasm before she was halfway across the room.

And yet she had to try. Across the screen of her mind she saw Red’s eyes again. Glowing with the ultimate challenge. Laughing in his triumph and in his power…

Goddamn you, you bastard. I’ll show you.

But it was difficult, so difficult.

Just leaving the cubicle and crossing to the mirror had her biting her lips and striving not to give in to the delicious inner torment. She smoothed her hair, taking in deep breaths, and touched the back of her hand to her blushing face. Her skin was glowing hot as if the blood beneath was on fire.

Schooling every scrap of her composure, she fought to control herself as she slipped her gloves back on, walked back to the dining room and wove amongst the other tables, making her way to where Red was sitting in the alcove. He was gazing out across the sea, his large hand cradling a glass of mineral water. His air was unruffled. Unconcerned. Almost sphinxlike.

But when he turned towards her, his eyes glinted merrily behind the lenses of his glasses, and he showed his white teeth in an infernal little smile. He might be wearing a dinner suit that
looked as if it had cost a small fortune, but he was nothing but a dangerous, bearded renegade who scrubbed up nicely.

“So?” he inquired, getting to his feet and coming around the table to draw out her chair.

“So what?” she countered, albeit through gritted teeth as she lowered herself into her seat. The spheres danced inside her with every slight movement, and she could feel that her face was still hot and blushing in a way that announced her inner turmoil.

“Ah, I see…it’s to be like that, is it?” Red reached out to pour her a little more mineral water. “You’re going to try and ignore what’s going on inside you and behave perfectly normally. Just to spite me.”

Vicki gave him a cool glare, well aware that the pink glow in her face undermined it. “Perhaps toys like these are perfectly normal to me, Red? How do you know that I don’t wear them every day at work?”

“In which case, you’re an even more awesome woman than I’ve already given you credit for,” he said with a soft laugh. “To be able to maintain phone conversations and participate in meetings while you’re always right on the edge of having an orgasm… Now,
that’s
an achievement. I salute you.”

He held out his glass, and when Vicki was obliged to lift hers too, he chinked them together in a toast.

“So, if you won’t tell me how you feel, tell me about yourself. What’s your history, Vicki? What’s your background? What makes you tick?”

A retort rose to her lips. Why ask all that when he knew all about her already via his buddy Shanley’s spies?

But somehow, Red’s expression was warm and friendly in a way that seemed quite apart from the eroticism that enveloped them. Vicki sensed a genuine interest, humanity, simple kindness.

She couldn’t forget for one second about the tantalizing sex toy inside her, but even so, she found herself spilling most of the significant steps of her life story out to Red. He asked the occasional question as she spoke, and their meal and wine was served. It was all delicious, probably the best Vicki had ever had put before her, but she barely registered a single taste or texture.

“And so you’re a free agent now. No obligations. No responsibilities,” Red observed as she wound up by telling him about the marriages of her mother and her sister. “You could do whatever you want…try something different?” His eyes narrowed. “I get a sense that you’re no longer quite as interested in your work as you used to be.”

How right he was.

“But it’s all I know,” she said with a shrug. That she immediately regretted. The tiny movement transmitted itself through her body and she had to catch her breath again.

“You could learn new things, Vicki. Live a different life.”

“I still have to eat, Red. I can’t live on thin air. I have some savings, but how do I know that I can secure another job at the end of some flight of self-indulgent fantasy?”

“What if money were no longer an issue? What if you had access to unlimited resources and could do absolutely anything in the pursuit of personal fulfillment?”

Vicki eyed him sharply. What was he getting at? She had the weirdest feeling that he wasn’t talking in hypothetical terms. “What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean live a life where your fantasies could be real.”

Vicki frowned when he placed his large hand over her slender one. Did he mean erotic fantasies? Surely nobody could ever actually
live
those kinds of sensual dreams…

“That’s crazy, Red. Nobody lives like that.”

“Perhaps not,” he conceded, and his eyes were oddly wistful as his long forefinger circled slowly over her wrist.

Vicki opened her mouth to pursue the matter but just then the waiter came to take their plates and ask if they wanted dessert. Having had virtually no appetite to start with, even after eating very little during the day, Vicki declined. Red did too. He’d not eaten a great deal either.

“What now?” she asked, stirring compulsively at her demitasse of coffee, even though she’d put neither cream nor sugar in it.

“There’s a soirée in the Salon tonight.” Red’s voice was airy, but the light of challenge blazed in his eyes.

The Salon?

Where the young woman had been fondled and subjugated for the pleasure of others, only this afternoon?

She narrowed her eyes. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Of course.” Red was gleeful now, his white teeth flashing.

Fear and anticipation and longing cavorted around inside her like a troupe of crazy dancers. She saw inner images of sensuality. Hands caressing bare bodies. Women—and men—being pleasured and punished. She imagined what it might be like to be the young woman she’d seen on the CCTV camera, exposed and exhibited.

Do I want that? Do I really want that? In the flesh…really happening and not just a scenario in my imagination that I can turn off at will?

“You don’t have to participate, Vicki. You can simply observe. You don’t have to give anything or do anything that you don’t want to.” Red’s voice was soft, almost kind again. “There are always more than enough exhibitionists at these affairs to provide a whole evening’s entertainment and more.”

“I’m not afraid, you know!” Did he doubt her courage? Think her too repressed, despite what they’d shared?
She
was the one sitting here, in a public place, with his infernal sex toy stimulating her more and more with every breath.

“I know you’re not, Vicki,” he replied equably. “But also I know that you’re a woman in control of her own life, who makes choices. And if you don’t choose this, it doesn’t mean that you’re a coward.”

“Okay, I choose it. Let’s go. When does it start?” Abruptly, she rose to her feet, gnawing hard on her lip at the wild jolting of the spheres.

She was balanced on a knife edge already. How would she feel when the floorshow began?

“Whenever you want.” He’d moved like lightning and was already at her side, a large supporting hand beneath her elbow. “Some of the participants have already assembled, I imagine.” He nodded towards several empty tables that had been full when they’d arrived.

“Let’s go then,” she said as imperiously as she could under the circumstances. Her bag was on the floor, against the table leg, and she couldn’t imagine what bending down to retrieve it would do to her.

Red cocked his head, winked and swooped down swiftly to retrieve the bag and hand it to her. His face was lit by an impish white grin.

She attempted to ignore him as they walked from the dining room, her in the lead, but it was impossible with his toy jiggling around inside her. The spheres rocked and jostled and seemed to draw his gaze to her, even though she couldn’t see him looking. She knew he was enjoying the way they added a nervousness and awareness to the way she moved. Not to mention the hug of the black satin encasing her buttocks.

“Which way?” she demanded once they reached the lobby.

“The double doors just beyond the staircase.”

The black lacquered door panels bore the classic design of the Art Deco sunburst and were rather fine but otherwise unremarkable. There was nothing to indicate that transgressive behavior lay beyond them. Drawing in a calming breath, Vicki set off in their direction, only to halt again when a voice called out, “Mr. Webster! A moment!”

Vicki turned to find the desk manager scuttling towards Red, an obsequious expression on his face. The two men engaged in low conversation for a moment or two, then Red nodded and came towards her.

“There’s something I have to do,” he said almost blandly. “It won’t take a moment. Would you like to wait for me in the cocktail bar?”

The words were so casual, so neutral, but as he spoke, Red’s eyes flicked towards the black lacquered doors, glittering and narrowed.

You devil, you think I daren’t go in on my own.

Defiance surged. Red was pushing her limits. Calling her bluff. She’d probably be playing right into his elegant tricky hands by rising to him, but still, there was no way she’d let him think she was a coward.

“Don’t worry. Take your time. I’ll wait in there for you.” She nodded to the sunburst doors, and before he had time to stop her, she’d reached them and had her gloved fingers on the door handle.

As she twisted it, pushed open the door and stepped inside, the last thing she heard was him softly laughing.

I knew you’d do it. God, Vicki, you never disappoint me, do you?

The door swung closed behind her yet he could still see her. The slender column of her back in that inky gleaming gown, and the pale perfection of her shoulders, braced in determination.

And her bottom, oh her bottom…

Bias-cut satin might have been invented specifically for her shape. It embraced the cheeks of her rump, clung to them as his hands wanted to cling to them right now, holding her and imagining the turmoil of desire in her loins, induced by his gift, the teasing love spheres. As a man he had no way of knowing precisely how they felt, but if it was anything like the almost constant gouging ache in his cock, and the yearning to be inside her that he’d experienced nearly all the time since he’d first set eyes on her… Well, if it was even the slightest bit like that, it was infernal and it must be driving her crazy.

Again, he could barely tolerate not being close to her, touching her and making her moan with his hand or fucking her. But holding back this way was part of the game, and a ploy that had proved to him, yet one more time, that she was supreme in every way.

He could also use these stolen moments for purely practical matters. He had phone calls to make, crucial ones that were absurdly overdue, and using the hotel’s computer, he could log in the company intranet and touch base with business issues he’d almost forgotten because of a certain proud, fiery woman in a sleek black dress.

It was going to be hellishly difficult to concentrate, though. Or focus on even the simplest elements of a variety of pressing negotiations that needed his personal yeah or nay. Not when all he really wanted to be doing was spanking Vicki’s bottom or plunging his raging cock deep inside her.

Gritting his teeth, he spun away from the sunburst door and strode away towards hotel’s management suite.

In the Salon, a subdued gleam of lighting from a series of ornate lamps gave the room a warm, embracing glow. Low streamlined chairs ringed the wall, much like the ones set in a rough circle at the far end of the room. Vicki clearly recognized the setting for punishment of the woman she’d seen on the CCTV.

A few guests—participants, perverts, call them what you would—had already assembled. At first they appeared as any normal gathering you’d expect in a luxury hotel—chatting, drinking cocktails, laughing amongst themselves—but on closer inspection there were some very significance differences.

To her right, a tall, dark-haired, rather severe-looking woman in a skintight blue gown was chatting to a man in a dinner suit. Innocuous enough, but kneeling at her heels was another woman. A woman trussed up in some kind of harness and wearing a close-fitting leather hood. Was she the pet of the dark-haired woman? Vicki decided she probably was.

In another group, two men were engaged in what looked like a serious business discussion. Their conversation was animated, almost heated. But even as they faced off against each other, one of the men was idly fondling the nipple of a silent redhead standing beside him. She was wearing an uncomfortable-looking gag, in the form of a rubber ball fastened into her mouth by a strap, and the bodice of her evening gown had been pulled down carelessly over her arms to reveal both breasts.

Vicki’s heart thudded. She didn’t know where to look, because everywhere her eyes lit upon new sights. It was as if a whole assembly of revelers now inhabited the dark, warped fantasy world that she’d thought only she and Red dwelt in.

I’ve made a mistake. I should have waited. I can’t do this alone.

“First time?” said a pleasant voice beside her, and Vicki spun around to find a man and a woman standing just a couple of feet away. He was dark and stocky with a jolly rounded face, and she was a strikingly pretty blonde of around Vicki’s own size and age. They made an attractive pair, and to Vicki’s surprise, in this mad gathering they appeared perfectly normal and were dressed accordingly with a singular lack of gags and harnesses and other accoutrements of kink.

“Yes, is it that obvious?” she answered with a smile, then puffed out her lips.

“It’s…um…all a bit eye-catching, isn’t it?”

“That’s true,” said the blonde with an infectious grin. “But you’re perfectly safe. Nobody will make you do anything you don’t want to.” She paused and patted the arm of her solid companion. “I’m Maria and this is Robert. Pleased to meet you.”